People have a capacity to imaginatively recreate mental states that they themselves do not have. These recreative states are referred to as ‘I-states’. Several philosophers, such as Gregory Currie,...

The expression ‘Like’ has a wide variety of uses among English and American speakers. It may describe preference, as in (1) She likes mint chip ice cream. It may be used as a vehicle of comparison, as in (2) Trieste is like Minsk on steroids.

This article focuses onsarcasm, for which the definitions have often been loose and confusing, integrating it into the concept ofirony. My approach is based on a large corpus of examples taken from two contemporary television-series, which help identify the wide range of linguistic processes at the core of sarcastic utterances. I present a quantitative and descriptive analysis of the main processes found in two American television-series:House M.D.andThe Big Bang Theory. The results show the intricate meanings created in sarcasm through various (...) linguistic mechanisms, such as repetition, explicitation, metonymy, metaphor, shift of focus, reasoning, and rhetorical questions. This more holistic analysis, including a broad corpus of instances and a more detailed analysis of the examples, aims to fill the unexplored gaps in more classical analyses, emphasizing the complexities and implications that can be drawn in interaction. (shrink)

The paper argues that the correct definition of lying is that to lie is to assert something one believes to be false, where assertion is understood in terms of the notion of the common ground of a conversation. It is shown that this definition makes the right predictions for a number of cases involving irony, joking, and false implicature. In addition, the proposed account does not assume that intending to deceive is a necessary condition on lying, and hence counts so-called (...) bald-faced lies as lies. (shrink)

This article focuses on the construction of two types of non-logical paradoxes in news discourse: 1) inconsistencies of positions and acts; 2) conflicts between reality and expectations or common sense. I will argue that these paradoxes are constructed by various discursive devices and will demonstrate the key role played by conventional and conversational implicatures in this regard. The discussion will focus on 23 items covering disputes between ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews, broadcast on mainstream Israeli television news in 2009. I will (...) show that the journalists consistently attribute paradoxicality to Haredim, and that this corresponds with the common public bitterness towards them because they enjoy financial support from the government, while sharing little of the economic and security burden. Moreover, I will argue that the paradoxical representations of Haredim rely on the secular ‘we’ group view and serve to base its common sense and norms. (shrink)

Situational irony concerns what it is about a situation that causes people to describe it as ironic. Although situational irony is as complex and commonplace as verbal and literary irony, it has received nowhere near the same attention from cognitive scientists and other scholars. This paper presents the bicoherence theory of situational irony, based on the theory of conceptual coherence (Kunda & Thagard, 1996; Thagard & Verbeurgt, 1998). On this theory, a situation counts as ironic when it is conceived as (...) having a bicoherent conceptual structure, adequate cognitive salience, and evokes an appropriate configuration of emotions. The theory is applied to a corpus of 250 examples of situational ironies gathered automatically from electronic news sources. A useful taxonomy of situational ironies is produced, new predictions and insights into situational irony are discussed, and extensions of the theory to other forms of irony are examined. (shrink)

In response to Mandy Simons’ defence of a classical Gricean approach to pragmatic enrichment in terms of conversational implicature, I emphasize the following contrast. Conversational implicatures are generated by a global inference which uses as a premise the fact that the speaker has said that p, but only the triggering inference is global in cases of pragmatic enrichment. What generates the correct interpretation is a process of reconstrual, which locally maps the literal meaning of a constituent to a modulated meaning (...) and composes that meaning with that of the other constituents. That process is constrained by Gricean considerations but that is true of all pragmatic aspects of interpretation, whether pre-propositional or post-propositional. Just as indexical resolution, though pragmatic and constrained by Gricean considerations, does not fit the two-stage model through which Grice accounts for conversational implicatures, so pragmatic modulation can’t be accounted for in terms of that model despite the fact that, like conversational implicatures and unlike indexical resolution, modulation is pragmatically rather than semantically triggered. (shrink)

Peter Hanks and Scott Soames both defend pragmatic solutions to the problem of the unity of the proposition. According to them, what ties together Tim and baldness in the singular proposition expressed by ‘Tim is bald’ is an act of the speaker : the act of predicating baldness of Tim. But Soames construes that act as force neutral and noncommittal while, for Hanks, it is inherently assertive and committal. Hanks answers the Frege–Geach challenge by arguing that, in complex sentences, the (...) force inherent in the content of an embedded sentence is cancelled. Indrek Reiland has recently objected to Hanks’s proposal that it faces a dilemma: either force cancellation dissolves the unity of the proposition secured by the cancelled act of assertion, or Hanks’s proposal reduces to Soames’s. In this paper, I respond to Reiland by offering an analysis of force cancellation which gets rid of the alleged dilemma. The proposal is based on a set of distinctions from speech act theory : between two senses of ’force’, two types of act, and two types of context. The role of simulation in force cancellation is emphasized, and connections drawn to broader issues such as the evolution of complex language. (shrink)

Firstly, this paper aims to analyze how verbal and visual modes contribute to build two basic components of cartoons: the referenced situation and the fictional situation. Secondly, it aims to unravel the semiotics of this discursive genre by offering a fine-grained picture of modal variations and continuities of the rhetorical resources deployed, by means of which the fictional situation is displayed. The corpus is composed of 50 multimodal cartoons chosen by cartoonists of 22 nationalities as the most representative of their (...) work in the frame of a wide questionnaire. Category analysis and non-parametric statistics were applied. We identified and fleshed out four different types of modal functioning of resources: visual preference, verbal preference, modal flexibility, and genuine multimodal functioning. Even if visual and multimodal metaphor were often in charge of transferring meaning from fiction to the referenced situation, results show that other resources such as antithesis, irony, and syllepsis can become the key resources of cartoons. Findings highlight the multilayered functioning of cartoons, among which plastic features can play a significant role, and provide further evidence in favor of the hyperdetermination of humor hypothesis proposed by Attardo. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify the distinctive and the shared features of the three phenomena: irony, understatement, and litotes. These rhetorical figures have been defined as synonymous, distinct or overlapping in various accounts. This indicates an interrelation but also a need for clearer definitions. Here, each of these rhetorical figures is defined via two jointly necessary conditions. This approach sharpens the categories, enables clear-cut distinctions and helps to explain cases of overlap. German corpus data and examples from (...) the literature as a basis, allow differentiating between cases of understatement as a means of irony, and cases of litotes as a means of understatement. Beyond that, litotes and understatement allow for non-ironic uses. Interestingly, litotic irony is built on litotic understatement. This is due to the overt contrast necessary for both understatement and irony. (shrink)

Any form of overt communication, be it gestural or linguistic, involves pragmatic skills. This article investigates the social–cognitive foundations of pragmatic development from infancy to late childhood and argues that it is driven by, among other things, the emergence of the capacities to assess the communicator's competence (e.g. perceptual access, epistemic states) and honesty. We discuss the implications of this proposal and show how it sheds new light on the developmental trajectory of a series of pragmatic phenomena, with a specific (...) focus on the development of irony comprehension. (shrink)

Narrative representations can change our moral actions and thoughts, for better or for worse. In this article, I develop a theory of fictions' capacity for moral education and moral corruption that is fully sensitive to the diversity of fictions. Specifically, I argue that the way a fiction influences our moral actions and thoughts importantly depends on its genre. This theory promises new insights into practical ethical debates over pornography and media violence.

The legal language of lawyers and judges is generally dry and factual but an examination of the rulings of Israeli Supreme Court justices shows that at least some of them use very picturesque speech to support their positions. This paper describes the use of figurative language as employed by Israeli Supreme Court justices in their writing of verdicts. Examples of the use of metaphors, metonymy, word play, imagery, oxymorons, parables and allegory are cited and discussed.

W artykule przedstawiamy model ironii komunikacyjnej sformułowany w ramach teorii aktów mowy. Twierdzimy, że akty ironii werbalnej stanowią szczególne przypadki zjawisk, które John L. Austin określał mianem etiolacji językowej. Po omó- wieniu pojęcia ironii komunikacyjnej rozumianego w duchu Mitchella S. Greena modelu komunikacji ekspresywnej, proponujemy rozwinięcie Austinowskiej idei etiolacji i pokazujemy, jak przypadki etiolacyjnego zastosowania języka pasożytują na mechanizmach jego poważnych lub zwykłych zastosowań. W szczególności argumentujemy, że przywołanie echem oraz jawne udawanie są dwoma technikami etiolacji, które umożliwiają nadawcy ekspresję (...) negatywnego nastawiania do kontekstowo dostępnych reprezentacji mentalnych lub językowych. Pokazujemy też, że proponowany model pozawala na wyjaśnienie werbalnych form ironii komunikacyjnej. (shrink)

In the article we present a model of communicative irony formulated within the framework of speech act theory. We claim that acts of verbal irony are special cases of phenomena that John L. Austin referred to as “etiolations of language”. After discussing the concept of communicative irony understood in the spirit of Mitchell S. Green’s expressive communication model, we propose to develop the Austinian idea of etiolation and show how cases of etiolative use of language parasitize the mechanisms of its (...) serious or ordinary applications. In particular, we argue that echoing and overt pretence are two etiolation techniques that allow the sender to express a negative attitude towards contextually available mental or linguistic representations. We also show that the proposed model allows the explanation of verbal forms of communicative irony. (shrink)

Irony is an effective but challenging mode of communication that allows a speaker to express viewpoints rich in sentiment with concision, sharpness and humour. Creative irony is especially common in online documents that express subjective and deeply-felt opinions, and thus represents a significant obstacle to the accurate analysis of sentiment in web texts. In this paper we look at one commonly used framing device for linguistic irony—the simile—to show how even the most creative uses of irony are often marked in (...) ways that make them computationally feasible to detect. We conduct a very large corpus analysis of web-harvested similes to identify the most interesting characteristics of ironic comparisons, and provide an empirical evaluation of a new algorithm for separating ironic from non-ironic similes. (shrink)

In a previous study, our research group investigated the expression of irony in Italian Sign Language (LIS) and suggested that specific manual and non-manual markers signaled the signer’s meaning and attitude. The present research aimed at expanding those findings by analyzing whether these markers are used in irony recognition and whether they are language-specific. We designed an experiment in which we compared recognition of ironic remarks out of context considering three groups of Italians: Deaf signers, hearing signers, and hearing non-signers. (...) Our aim was to verify whether the manual and non-manual markers we associated with the expression of irony in LIS constitute a reliable cue to detect irony and whether these cues were accessible to signers more than to non-signers sharing the same cultural background. Although the ironic intent in LIS was accessible also to hearing non-signers, we found, among hearing participants, that knowledge of LIS does improve accuracy in recognizing ironic remarks in LIS. This suggests that signers’ facial expressions and bodily movements do not solve a purely affective function, but are grammaticalized, at least to some degree. (shrink)

One of the compelling events during the 2020 spring coronavirus pandemic is the extent to which people call-out “irony” in regard to the speech and actions of other individuals, as well as, in some...

In earlier work (“Why irony is pretence”, in S. Nichols (ed) The Architecture of Imagination, Oxford University Press, 2006) I have argued for a version of the pretence theory of irony — a version according to which the ironist is pretending to adopt a perspective which is defective in some way. I also contrasted this version of the pretence theory with the echoic theory of Sperber and Wilson, concluding that the pretence theory is superior. Deirdre Wilson has now responded to (...) this paper (“The pragmatics of verbal irony : echo or pretence?” Lingua 116 (2006) 1722-1743). In the present paper I respond to Wilson’s counterarguments. I also generate a counterexample to the echoic theory which helps to show that, contrary to what some have thought, the echoic and pretence theories are not equivalent. Finally, I consider some of the consequences for literary theory of thinking of irony as pretending to have a defective point of view. (shrink)

Riassunto: Nell’età dello sviluppo, i bambini iniziano a comprendere e a produrre le prime espressioni ironiche, in particolare nel contesto familiare. Sebbene sia comprensione sia produzione di ironia richiedano abilità linguistiche, pragmatiche, di Teoria della Mente e di tipo socio-comunicativo, non è ancora chiaro come tali abilità entrino in gioco nel caso della produzione del sarcasmo. Questo contributo ripercorre gli studi principali sulla comprensione vs. produzione dell’ironia in età evolutiva, mettendo in evidenza il ruolo delle capacità affettive e argomentative necessarie (...) alla produzione dell’ironia e del sarcasmo. In riferimento a studi recenti, si ipotizza che le capacità di Mind-mindedness genitoriale possano influenzare lo sviluppo delle capacità di lettura della mente e, più in particolare, gli aspetti affettivi e relazionali nel processo di comprensione dell’ironia. Si ipotizza altresì che la produzione dell’ironia, e in particolare del sarcasmo, sia modulata non solo dalle capacità affettive ma anche da quelle argomentative in via di sviluppo. Parole chiave: Produzione del sarcasmo; Capacità affettive; Capacità argomentative; Comprensione; Teoria della mente Comprehension vs. Production of Sarcasm: The role of the affective and argumentative capacities in childhood: Children start comprehending and producing their first ironic expressions quite early especially in the family environment. The comprehension and the production of irony require linguistic, pragmatic, social and communicative capacities as well as abilities related to the Theory of Mind. However, it is not yet clear how these abilities are involved in the production of sarcasm. In this manuscript we review the main studies on the production of irony in childhood in order to identify the affective and argumentative capacities that are needed for the production of irony and sarcasm and the specific role they play in that. On the basis of these studies, we hypothesize that parental mind-mindedness promote children’s development of mindreading capacities and, more specifically, of those affective and relational aspects needed for the comprehension of irony. Moreover, we also argue that the production of irony and even more of sarcasm depends not only on the affective capacities but also on the developing argumentative capacities of the children. Keywords: Production of Sarcasm; Affective Capacities; Argumentative Capacities; Comprehension, Theory of Mind. (shrink)

Traditional theories of sarcasm treat it as a case of a speaker's meaning the opposite of what she says. Recently, 'expressivists' have argued that sarcasm is not a type of speaker meaning at all, but merely the expression of a dissociative attitude toward an evoked thought or perspective. I argue that we should analyze sarcasm in terms of meaning inversion, as the traditional theory does; but that we need to construe 'meaning' more broadly, to include illocutionary force and evaluative attitudes (...) as well as propositional content. I distinguish four subclasses of sarcasm, individuated in terms of the target of inversion. Three of these classes raise serious challenges for a standard implicature analysis. (shrink)

This article addresses issues in the philosophy of fiction from the perspective of a relevance theoretic approach to communication: first, how should we understand the notion of ‘voice’ as it is used in the analysis of free indirect style narratives; and, second, in what sense can the person responsible for free indirect representations of fictional characters' thoughts be regarded as a communicator? The background to these questions is the debate about the roles of pretence and attribution in free indirect style. (...) I argue that the role of expressives in sustaining the illusion that fictional characters speak their inner thoughts suggests that ‘voice’ should be understood in two distinct ways. On the one hand, there are cases in which the use of expressive devices leads to the formation of thoughts which are understood to resemble other (attributed) thoughts. On the other hand, there are other cases in which expressives are used as a means of simulating a fictional character's behaviour or style. At the same time, I argue that in order to accommodate free indirect thought representation in a relevance theoretic model of communication, the responsibility for ensuring that the effort of processing the text will be rewarded by optimal relevance must be decoupled from the point of view that is being represented. While the (constructed) author is responsible for orchestrating our interpretation of free indirect thought representations so that the effort of processing will result in optimal relevance, the reader does not necessarily assume this function is being performed by someone who intends to communicate their own thoughts: the relevance of the act of narration may instead lie in the sense of mutuality achieved between reader and character. (shrink)

The distinction between literal and figurative use is well-known and embedded in ‘folk linguistics’. According to folk linguistics, figurative uses deviate from literal ones. But recent work on lexical modulation and polysemy shows that meaning deviation is ubiquitous, even in cases of literal use. Hence, it has been argued, the literal/figurative distinction has no value for theorising about communication. In this paper, we focus on metaphor and argue that here the literal–figurative distinction has theoretical importance. The distinction between literal and (...) metaphorical needs to be captured by our account of communication because literal uses transmit information in a way that metaphorical ones do not. We argue that there is a way to explain the literal/metaphorical distinction that preserves the core of the folk-linguistic idea and gives the distinction theoretical relevance. We propose that literal uses of a word are made with the intention to conform to an established practice of use, while metaphorical uses do not so conform, but depend on this pre-existing practice. Our account can deal with data that are problematic for other theories. A further advantage is that it extends naturally to other non-literal uses of words, including metonymy. (shrink)

Two rival accounts of irony claim, respectively, that pretence and echo are independently sufficient to explain central cases. After highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of these accounts, I argue that an account in which both pretence and echo play an essential role better explains these cases and serves to explain peripheral cases as well. I distinguish between “weak” and “strong” hybrid theories, and advocate an “integrated strong hybrid” account in which elements of both pretence and echo are seen as complementary (...) in a unified mechanism. I argue that the allegedly mutually exclusive elements of pretence and echo are in fact complementary aspects enriching a core structure as follows: by pretending to have a perspective/thought F, an ironic speaker U echoes a perspective/thought G. F is merely pretended, perhaps caricaturised or exaggerated, while G is real/possible. (shrink)

I distinguish, and discuss the relations between, five types of context-shift involving indexicals. For 'intentional' indexicals - indexicals whose value depends upon the speaker's intention - we can shift the context more or less 'at will', by manifesting one's intention to do so. For other indexicals we can shift the context through pretense. Following a number of authors, I distinguish two types of context-shifting pretense, corresponding to two sets of linguistic phenomena. The fourth type of case is that of expressions (...) which are not really indexical, but perspectival, and for which we do not need to appeal to the notion of context-shift in order to account for their shifty behaviour. The fifth category I introduce and discuss is that of 'shiftable indexicals'. Do we need it, given that we already have the other four categories? My answer is a qualified 'yes'. (shrink)

Traditionally irony has been researched as a verbal mode of communicating non-literal meaning. Yet, the extant literal/non-literal meaning oriented research provided conflicting evidence and failed to explain how irony vs. non-irony is processed. The dominant literal/non-literal meaning approach hasn’t accounted for the role of attitudinal non-propositional contents so crucially involved in irony communication and comprehension. Employed to communicate indirectly, on top of non-literal meaning, irony serves to convey implicit attitudes: emotional load non-propositionally attached to the propositional contents. The role of (...) emotional contents implicitly communicated by irony has not been acknowledged in irony research so far. This paper reviews irony and attitude research, focusing on the non-propositional, emotional contents, aiming to bridge the propositional-non-propositional meaning gap in irony research. Neuroimaging and behavioral evidence showing that emotional load profoundly influences communicative contents processing, priming its computation and determining its processing patterns, is presented, and its role for irony processing is highlighted. (shrink)